Title: Digital Fortress
Author: Dan Brown
Main Characters: Susan Fletcher, David
Becker, Ensei Tankado, Numataka, Greg Hale, Strathmore, Midge, Jabba, Soshi,
Chad Binkerhoff, Leland Fontaine, Rocio, Phil Chartrukian, Hulohot and Megan
Description Of One Of The Main
Characters: Phil Chartrukian is Sys-sec(system-security) in the NSA(Nation
Security Agency) Crypto. He is very loyal to the director, Leland Fontaine, and
loves his job dearly. When he figures out that there is a virus in the
TRANSLTR, the code breaking machine of NSA Crypto, he gives up his life during
the attempt to save it. He gets sh
Whom I Like And Why: I like Ensei
Tankado very much. He is an extremely brilliant man with computers and codes. He
creates the great Digital fortress- a code completely unbreakable even for the
TRANSLTR! He is amazing. He was born disabled due to the bomb blast in
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He raises three fingers, one of them bearing a ring
with mysterious inscriptions, when he dies.
Whom I Dislike And Why: I hate
Strathmore. He is a ruthless murderer and a heartless man. He doesn’t hesitate
to kill anyone. He is the head of Crypto. He kills Phil and Greg Hale, and also
kills himself in the end.
Setting/Theme Of The Story: Susan
Fletcher is very happy until she receives two phone calls- one from her fiancé,
David Becker, telling her that he is off to Spain as he has to do urgent,
important things; and the second from her Commander, Strathmore, asking her to
immediately come to the Crypto as there was an EMERGENCY.
Susan immediately goes to the Crypto,
and Strathmore explains the situation to her. The TRANSLTR, the greatest
code-breaking machine, has not been able to break the code of the late Ensei
Tankado. The hightest time TRANSLTR had ever taken to break codes was three
hours. But this code didn’t break even after eighteen hours of work by the
TRANSLTR. Ensei Tankado was declared to
have died from a heart attack. Just as he breathed his final, Ensei Tankado had
pushed three fingers into the air, one of them bearing a ring with mysterious
letterings, to inform something to the public. The people had assumed it to be
the ring and one of them had taken it off.
Meanwhile, in Spain, David, who was
sent by Strathmore, goes in search of the Canadian who had taken the ring from
Tankado. But the Canadian had given it off to a girl named Rocio. With the help
of the Canadian’s description of Rocio, he finds the girl. But she had given it
off to a young punk. Rocio describes her and hints to David as to where the
young girl had gone. David sets about searching for the young punk, Megan.
But Strathmore has other greedy plans.
He wants to marry Susan, and wants David dead. So, he sends a man named Hulohot
to kill David. Hulohot kills all the people David meets to ask about the ring. He
had killed Ensei Tankado, the Canadian and Rocio. He also kills Megan, the
young punk from whom David gets the ring. David is unaware that he will be the
next victim.
At the same time, Midge, the woman who
checks the progress of TRANSLTR, gets alarmed when her data shows that TRANSLTR hadn’t been
able to break a code for 18 hours! She informs Jabba, the head of Sys-Sec and
also the director of NSA, Leland Fontaine. But they don’t believe her.
In the Crypto, Strathmore informs
Susan that Tankado had partnered with a man named North Dakota and that North
Dakota’s email ID was:
Susan finds out a wrong information
that Greg Hale is North Dakota. When she tries to contact Strathmore, she
suddenly hears a gun shot. Phil was dead. She assumes that Greg had shot Phil
but in reality it had been Strathmore who had done it. She gets terrified and
goes back to her terminal only to see Greg Hale dead too. Susan, soon, gets to
know that Strathmore is the culprit. All this time, the TRANSLTR heats up to a
dangerous extent.
Midge gets extremely tensed in the NSA
main office and studies her data again. This time she calls Jabba to show that
there was some kind of virus. It also meant that Strathmore had bypassed the
Gauntlet, the safety filter of the TRANSLTR. Even worse, Jabba discovers that it is a worm and not a virus. They fail
to contact Strathmore.
Strathmore had signed a billion dollar
deal with Numataka promising him to give the ring, but he cuts the deal off. At
that point, Susan understands that NDAKOTA was a perfect anagram of TANKADO!
She feels miserable.
Strathmore, too guilty to continue
living, takes his own life. Susan manages out of the Crypto and goes to the NSA
main office. She narrates everything there.
Becker is followed by Hulohot
everywhere. Finally Hulohot shoots David and David falls. Assuming that David is dead, Hulohot goes off. But it is just a flesh wound and David recovers. He
contacts Susan and they all try to figure out the passkey which would stop the
attacking worm. Tankado had shown number three and the letterings in the ring
said it was a prime number. Putting two and two together, Susan finds out that
the passkey is number 3. They enter it and the worm stops. All the files in the
databank gets recovered. They relax. But they all accept one thing- it had been a real DIGITAL FORTRESS.
Numataka realizes that Tankado is his
own son whom he abandoned, and feels guilty for doing so.
